We Care! Living with Those Suffering fron Psycological Distress Could Be a Form of Democratic Education?

This speech focuses on the possibility to find democratic education working with people experiencing psychological distress. Both perspectives and modalities of intervention of educational work within mental health can be read as a view of democratic education. The core of the issue is the promotion of recognition and acceptance of individual uniqueness as well as the construction of a dialogue with the most difficult aspects of existence (the limits, the suffering), through the creation of places where it would be possible to experience sharing as well as learning different ways to take care of oneself, the others and the world. This theoretical research is a work in progress. It analyses in a pedagogical, archaeological and genealogical way the significant interdisciplinary literature (either psychiatry, philosophy, sociology and pedagogy), and it also analyse some studies developed by practitioners in the mental health field. These are the main issues emerged. The study of informal education highlights an environment that is animated by undemocratic anti-pedagogic customs and trends: daily life makes it more and more difficult to process the experience of limitations, of suffering and of all forms of differences, life “teaches” us to flee from these aspects, actually confining experiential subjective possibilities and the sharing with others. Educational work in mental health forces people with psychological distress, as well as services and territory, to deal with human fragility and existence uniqueness, creating situations and building tools for an educational confrontation. Therefore it may be a valuable opportunity to learn new forms of intersubjective relationships and to extend the scope of existential possibilities of each. “It may”: to move in this direction it is necessary to support the educational work, not so much with those who have psychological problems, but with those who think they do not have any.